


Thread the Needle

by glasscaskets, kittyandmulder



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1930s, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Blood and Injury, Gangs, Gun Violence, M/M, Minor Violence, Prohibition, Tailoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 06:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19101658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscaskets/pseuds/glasscaskets, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittyandmulder/pseuds/kittyandmulder
Summary: “This might be a little odd,” Mr. Barnes said, folding the grey suit jacket carefully on the counter between him and Steve. He seemed a little fidgety, a little nervous. “I need something, just pants and a jacket, that I can walk out with today. Long story - do you think you can help a fella out?”OR: Steve is a tailor, Bucky is in a pinch, it's 1932, and Steve (as usual) makes some momentously dumb decisions in the name of love. Or at least of a crush.For the 2019 Cap Reverse BigBang, inspired by the incredible art of kittyandmulder.





	1. Thread the Needle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kittyandmulder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittyandmulder/gifts).



> All of this was inspired by the incredible art of [kittyandmulder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittyandmulder/pseuds/kittyandmulder) for the 2019 Cap RBB!
> 
> I'd like to thank [PR Zed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuja/pseuds/Kuja>Kuja</a>%20and%20<a%20href=) for their patient and invaluable beta work as well!!!
> 
> It's.....mostly historically accurate. And very, very gay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: Now way more readable after some major formatting snafus!!

Most people didn’t get into tailoring because it was exciting.

 

Actually, Steve hadn’t gotten into tailoring for any particular reason; he’d simply picked up the work when his father died because, faced with the prospect of either a boring job or starving, Steve had, narrowly, selected the former.

 

Narrowly.

 

Then Mom died, too, and while people weren’t exactly clamoring to buy seventeen-dollar suits in East Flatbush, the shop had been there for a solid two-and-change generations, belonging to the Regenbogen family until Steve’s father and two of his uncles bought it up in 1912, the year after Steve was born. It was established, and even popular; even with ownership passing from Russian Jewish to Irish Catholic hands. The small handful of devoted customers who’d outfitted their sons in their first suits in this shop, ever since it was possessed of only one foot-pedal-operated sewing machine back in 1897 always returned. It made for steady work, which was as close to a miracle as one could get in Steve’s world - especially when he stood five-foot-four in his shoes and was an orphan by eighteen.

 

It didn’t make for exciting work, and certainly not for great money, but Steve had learned quite young to take what he could get.

 

So, by the spring of 1932, with one uncle returned to Ireland and the other dead, Steve was running the small shop by himself. It wasn’t what it once was, and the supply of customers dwindled steadily as the months and years wore on, but at twenty-one with no other training and no sign of a miracle growth spurt on the horizon, Steve could do nothing but carry on.

 

Again: he learned young to take what he could get.

 

It was May and muggy, foggy and wet - like spring and summer were warring between rain and heat. Steve was perched on the stool by the ancient cash register, doodling idly on the back of a receipt, wondering if anybody was going to come in that day. He’d had a customer Monday morning - Mrs. Sobol looking to get a pair of her husband’s pants hemmed for her middle son - and now it was Thursday and the pants were hemmed. Until Mrs. Sobol came back, Steve thought, he might not see another person. And, since there was enough food for dinner at home—well, there was a can of Campbell’s, anyways—that might mean Steve wouldn’t talk to anyone today. The record for the longest the store had gone without any customers -nobody at all -was eight days. Steve’s personal record for not talking to anybody at all was six days. He was currently counting two days of silence.

 

He was drawing a scene from _The Bulpington of Blup_ , which was exactly the sort of sentence that used to get his ass beat back in grade school; but if he was going to be paying his own way he could spare some dimes on illustrated science fiction. He’d read _The Time Machine_ back in grade school and fallen in love then and there, and it wasn’t like anybody was going hungry for Steve to read some H.G. Wells. Well, anybody but Steve.

 

He was idly shading a scene of trench warfare - a preoccupation of Steve’s as much as Theodore’s in the novel, if for different reasons - when the dust-coated bell over the door, which was coated in dust and had been there since the McKinley administration, rattled out something approximating a ding.

 

Steve glanced up and nearly dropped the pile of receipts he’d been drawing on, catching them against his chest. He didn’t think he’d ever see him again.

 

“Hey,” said the man at the door easily, immediately shedding his heavy black overcoat and striding to the counter - to Steve - in two steps. He took off his hat, too, almost as an afterthought, and smiled. “Can you squeeze me in?”

 

Had anyone else made so obvious a jab at his lack of customers, Steve would have flushed and stammered at best, thrown them out more likely - he had, after all, banned Joshua Wyatt and his younger brothers from the premises after a fistfight broke out regarding the price of a pair of pants - but in this instance Steve found himself inclined to forgive. There was just _something_ about this particular customer.

 

Okay, so Steve could admit it in the privacy of his own head; the something about the man was that he was extremely handsome.

 

“I’ll find a way,” Steve said, looking at Mr. Barnes - Mr. James Barnes, who was very tall, broad, and always, _always_ impeccably dressed. Steve, who dressed people for a living, very rarely looked as sharp as Mr. Barnes did. On this day, he was wearing a well-fitting grey suit, but he was already shucking the jacket off too.

 

“This might be a little odd,” Mr. Barnes said, folding the grey suit jacket carefully on the counter between him and Steve. He seemed a little fidgety, a little nervous. “I need something, just pants and a jacket, that I can walk out with today. Long story - do you think you can help a fella out?”

 

Steve stepped out from behind the counter, drawing himself up to Mr. Barnes - who was a full head taller than he was - and eyeing his shoulders. “What size shirt do you wear?” Steve asked, squinting. He felt like an idiot for not wearing his glasses today, but also grateful - they were busted badly from a street fight almost two years ago, and he’d never gotten them fixed. They looked ludicrous on him, and anyways, he didn’t need them for up close work. He stepped a tiny bit closer to Mr. Barnes, breathing in the scent of his cologne, clean and sharp, so unlike Steve’s detergent-and-ivory-soap smell. “I’d call your chest—42, 44 inches? I’ll measure.”

 

He turned towards the back of the store, gesturing Mr. Barnes to follow, and behind him he heard a little sigh and Mr. Barnes said, “Thank you. Seriously, Steve.”

 

Steve felt his cheeks warming at that, and swallowed hard, telling himself to stop being an idiot. Somebody knowing his name was not cause to turn red all the way down to his belly button - but he was - he could feel it. He’d always blushed way too easily.

 

He wasn’t sure exactly when Mr. Barnes learned his name, but he wasn’t sorry about it.

 

In the back - well, further back, the whole store is quite small; Steve’s uncle used to call it the “glorified wardrobe” - Steve grabbed a measuring tape and slipped a pincushion over his wrist, eyeing Mr. Barnes under his white shirt. Steve could see his undershirt, and the muscles of his shoulders, which weren’t too broad but were sharp and defined - almost tense, maybe. He stepped up close behind Mr. Barnes, dragging a step stool with him. He’d need it to measure Barnes’s chest properly without looking like a child trying to reach a high shelf. He felt the stupid blush deepen.

 

“Okay,” he said, stepping up onto the stool and wrapping his tape measure around Barnes’s shoulders. He swallowed around his dry mouth, thrown off by Barnes’s sudden appearance and the strangeness of his request, the way his shoulders tensed and the way his eyes kept flicking to the door. This close, Steve could see all the muscles in his neck shift. “I’m just gonna take - take three measurements, your arms, your chest, and your waist, then see if I have anything for you. Is that okay?”

 

“Sure thing,” Barnes said, his eyes going from the window to meet Steve’s in the mirror and he smiled. The Steve in the mirror blushed too.

 

“Alright,” Steve said, “arms by your sides.”

 

Mr. Barnes complied, and while Steve saw that his eyes flicked back up to the window, he focused on measuring the widest part of Barnes’s shoulders, trying not to think about just how much wider than him Barnes was - most men, and even most boys out of knee pants were wider than Steve, after all - before asking Barnes to hold his arms out to the side.

 

“I hope you’re not ticklish,” Steve said, going to set the tape measure under Barnes’s armpits, then rolled his eyes at himself. He’d fitted Barnes before, and anyways, what kind of stupid, dorky thing to say was that?

 

Barnes smiled, though, and said, “Not much,” then dropped his arms back down without being asked, so Steve could measure properly.

 

Steve caught himself smiling back, then quickly noted the measurement on the tape. He’d been just about spot on when he guessed Barnes’s measurements.

 

He stepped down from the stool. “If you can bend a bit,” he said, awkwardly demonstrating, “to find the natural crease of your waist?”

 

Bucky did it, tilting towards Steve, not away, like most people, crooking his body so his face was a bit closer to Steve. He smiled more broadly.

 

“Perfect,” Steve said, and tried not to think too hard about his hands slipping around Barnes’s waist, snaking the measuring tape as he went, keeping it a bit loose, the way his father had taught him. Barnes straightened up, again without being asked, natural and loose, some of the tension leaking from his body.

 

Steve jotted down the last of Mr. Barnes’s measurements and nodded to himself. Barnes’s measurements were fairly standard, he thought; there was almost certainly something in the back that would fit him.

 

“Let me just look around,” he told Mr. Barnes, who nodded gratefully. “I’m almost certain we’ll have something to fit you.”

 

Steve slipped into the back, as much to give himself a moment as to find Barnes a jacket. He stood in the cramped little back room closet, among reams of fabric, carefully labeled orders and stray pins and needles. He frowned down at the sewing machine.

 

Sometimes, when you went as long as Steve often did without talking to anybody - when you were, Steve reflected, as lonely and miserable a fucker as he was - it could be hard to tell if people were behaving strangely or not. For instance, whether or not it was a little odd to show up towards closing time asking for a new jacket for no apparent reason, although it wasn’t exactly Steve’s business either way. Or if Barnes was being jittery and tense, or Steve was just projecting because he was so nervous himself around Mr. Barnes.

 

Well. That wasn’t for no reason. There was a specific reason Mr. Barnes made him nervous, and Steve knew it, even if he didn’t like to dwell on it much.

 

Mr. Barnes was - there was no way around it - very, very attractive. Steve knew perfectly well this wasn’t the sort of thing he ought to be thinking about customers, _his_ customers, especially his male customers, but there was nothing for it. He didn’t think Barnes was just good-looking, he didn’t think it would be nice to look that way himself - well, it would be nice to look some other way besides “scrawny” and “sickly” and “stupid enough to pick a fight with someone twice his size,” but he was used to that. No, Barnes wasn’t abstractly handsome; he was distractingly, _absurdly_ handsome.

 

And it wasn’t just his face. Steve had fitted him for suits before - hell, he might have fitted Barnes for the suit he’d walked in wearing - and found himself, every time, driven to distraction by. Well, by Barnes’s body, yes, but there was something more to it, something enticing and intoxicating about that proximity, the almost-intimacy of being so close to Barnes’s undershirt and his skin - the _casualness_ of it.

 

He knew better. He should know better than to be thinking such things; but he’d had these thoughts for as long as he could remember. They didn’t appear to be going away any time soon. And thinking such things about _Barnes_ was a specific and sublime distraction.

 

Steve had, of course, fitted many men for shirts and pants and jackets and vests, and many of them had been handsome, and from time to time Steve did find himself distracted by them. Barnes was no exception, except that -

 

Well.

 

Steve sometimes got the feeling Barnes knew exactly what he was thinking, and _didn’t mind._ At all.

 

Steve shook his head, swallowed, and rummaged hurriedly through the shirts and suits on the back rack. He found one that had lived most of its life on a mannequin and brushed some dust off. Doing so made him sneeze - several times, actually, and pretty severely - but the suit was a deep, handsome navy blue, double-breasted, and Steve couldn’t deny it would look very good on Mr. Barnes.

 

When Steve emerged from the back room bearing the jacket with matching pants (just in case), Barnes wasn’t in front of the mirror where he’d left him, but had made his way to the front of the shop, where he was peering out the large window. He’d put his shirt back on over his undershirt, but it was thin and Steve could make out the lines of him - the lines you’d draw, he thought, idly - through the fabric. Steve thought he detected some of that tension in his shoulders and neck again - almost an anticipation. His hand was pressed hard to his front, though Steve could only see the back of him. He couldn’t see his face at all.

 

“Mr. Barnes?” he asked, quietly.

 

“Oh!”

 

Mr. Barnes jumped a little and turned around swiftly, dropping his hand from his side and smiling at Steve. His brow was furrowed, mouth pursed almost sourly, but as Steve watched he smoothed his expression out into a serene, almost-hangdog smile.

 

“Thanks so much again, Steve,” Barnes said, “I really appreciate this.”

 

“It’s no trouble,” Steve said, and it wasn’t. Barnes was average-sized, more or less, and more than that he was pleasant to be around. Steve could admit that, to himself. He didn’t dare delude himself into thinking - into dreaming - that Barnes could ever think of him in such friendly terms, but he figured what was the harm in enjoying Barnes’s company while he could?

 

 _Christ, Rogers_ , he thought to himself, _you’re lonely._

 

“I just hope it fits,” he added, and beckoned him over to the mirror. Barnes threw one last glimpse at the window, his face briefly crumpling up again, before he nodded and followed Steve. “I brought pants,” Steve added, as Barnes made his way over. “I wasn’t sure if you’d need them.”

 

“Oh, God - thank you, that’s perfect! You’re a lifesaver, I mean it.” Barnes grinned, and without ceremony dropped his trousers. Steve felt his entire face flush - Christ, he was staring at Barnes’s _thighs!_ \- and held out the pants with one hand. Barnes slipped them off the hanger easily, and winked at Steve.

 

 _Holy shit_.

 

Deciding he must have been imagining the wink - a _wink_ , good God - Steve looked at the floor and tried to focus on Mr. Barnes as strictly a client. He was wearing blue striped shorts neatly buttoned over his undershirt, and, as he stepped out of his pants, Steve saw he was wearing sock garters as well.  

 

Not for the first time, Steve wondered why so many of his clients were better dressed than him. Well, Barnes in particular clearly took great care.

 

A moment later, Barnes had shimmied into the pants and was holding out his arms, waiting for Steve to help him into the jacket.

 

He could have just taken the jacket. But he was waiting for Steve to put it on him. In itself this was hardly something to write home about - this was Steve’s job, after all - but combined with the goddamn _wink_ -

 

Firmly instructing himself to get a grip, Steve hopped onto the step stool and held out the jacket. Barnes stepped in easily, and Steve instinctively smoothed down the lapels.

 

“You look very good, Mr. Barnes,” he said, and truly - he did. The suit fit him well - not as well as if Rogers had tailored it for him, of course - but it was very flattering. Steve reached forward and carefully freed Barnes’s collar from the lapels of the jacket.

 

Barnes turned around as Steve stepped down from the stool, catching Steve’s elbows as he went. His hands were very large and very warm.

 

“I told you to call me Bucky,” he said, with a grin, and Steve wondered if he imagined it or if Mr. Barnes - Bucky - really was running his fingers lightly up and down the skin at the back of Steve’s elbows, eczema-rough though it was.

 

 _Bucky_ ; like a name for a pet or a small child. Something so familiar and friendly and, damn it all, _cute_.

 

“It’s - it’s inappropriate,” Steve heard himself say - Barnes’s fingers really _were_ rubbing the back of his arm - “to call a customer that.”

 

Mr. Barnes grinned, and for the first time that day, his smile reached his eyes. “I insist,” he said.

 

Steve swallowed, and wondered for a panicky moment if he was going to do something terrible like burp or puke. It occurred to him suddenly, that he’d never actually been flirted with before. This was perhaps, a taste of what it was like.

 

“Maybe next time, Mr. Barnes,” he mumbled.

 

Barnes smiled and squeezed his elbows one last time. Steve swallowed and felt himself blushing nearly down to his belly; _God, Rogers! You’re a lonely fucker_ , he thought.

 

Barnes released him at last, and crossed in a few quick steps to the chair where he’d deposited his fine black overcoat. He pulled something from the pocket and strode back to Steve, who was folding himself back behind the counter to ring Mr. Barnes up.

 

Barnes spread a swatch of black fabric out over the counter and began to slide his arms into his coat. “I have to give this to you for a repair,” he said lightly, and Steve glanced down and saw his own tag— _Rogers’ Brothers Tailoring_. It was a waistcoat, a fine black one Steve had tailored for Mr. Barnes himself less than five weeks ago, as a special order. It was expensive - it had, in fact paid for some of the Campbell’s soup Steve was still eating to this day.

 

“I made this suit last month.” he said. Steve found himself wondering, however briefly, if maybe Barnes was giving him something just to have a reason to come back in—but even _if_ that was going to happen (and, Steve reflected, he really had to get a grip), he could simply return the suit he was borrowing right now. “What’s wrong?”

 

Barnes took a small step backwards, taking his hat off the counter where he’d laid it when he first walked in, and smiled at Steve again in that way that emphasized the creases around his eyes.

 

“You’re smart,” he said, with a fondness and confidence so rarely directed at Steve in his lifetime, “you’ll work it out.”

 

And then he was out the door, leaving the room suddenly airless and empty, and Steve alone with just the waistcoat and the lingering smell of Barnes’s cologne. Steve wasn’t sure if Barnes wore a lot of it, or if he just didn’t know anybody else who wore any.

 

He glanced down at the waistcoat on the counter and turned it over - looking for any reason it might need to be repaired or tailored - and found it quickly. On the front of the coat, the right side below the breast, there was a hole - large enough for Steve to stick several of his skinny, calloused fingers into - frayed severely around the edges and coated with an odd greyish dust.

 

Steve threaded his fingers through the hole several times, staring out the door after Mr. Barnes—Mr. Barnes, who wanted Steve to call him “Bucky,” who _winked_ at him, whose vest couldn’t possibly have a bullet hole in it - because this wasn’t a detective novel, this wasn’t a story in a magazine for kids (or for tailors killing time, as it were) - but Steve would bet his last dollar (literally, he was just about down to it, these days) that the hole in Bucky Barnes’s fancy waistcoat, with its _Rogers Brothers Tailoring_ tag Steve had sewn on himself, was from a bullet.

 

 _Who are you?_ Steve thought, gaping at the closed door. _Who on earth are you, Bucky Barnes?_

 

Bucky. It sounded like a name for a child or a beloved pet.

 

Steve looked down at the hole in the vest, back out the window, and took a deep breath. There were several factors to consider, here.

 

First of all, there was minding his own business, but Steve had never been particularly good at that—he’d gotten into a fight in a picture house less than a week ago—so that was out of the question.

 

Next, there was Barnes. The tense way he’d held himself, the way he’d hunched his shoulders and how even with those brief moments of relaxation - when he’d grinned at Steve, winked, touched him - he’d remained tight and pinched in a way that was familiar to Steve in a way that only dawned on him now: he’d been in _pain_.

 

Steve took a deep breath and bit his lip.

 

He’d known James Barnes— _Bucky_ —for about five years now, ever since he’d first walked into the store looking for some new trousers and had gotten to talking with Steve about the Yankees who, in the spring of ’27, were not looking too promising. Of course, that had been the summer Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth had hit a combined 107 home runs, and over the course of those long, unbearably hot months—the city had been hit with such a towering heat wave that many people, Steve included, had taken to sleeping at night on their fire escapes—they’d had a great deal to talk about. Barnes had said, many times, that he and Steve should go to a baseball game together, or even go to Yankee Stadium for a boxing game, and while Steve had always deferred - apart from anything else, he didn’t have the money - they’d never stopped talking. In the many months since the spring of 1927, Barnes had routinely shown up once every few months to the little store on Lenox Road, always greeting Steve with a smile and news of baseball or a Gene Tunney fight.

 

The first time Barnes had come in after Steve’s father died, he’d told Steve quite seriously that he’d heard what had happened—there was a little obituary in the paper, Steve knew, though he’d barely been able to keep track of the days and faces—and he wanted to say how sorry he was. He’d done the same when Steve’s uncle, the last of the three Rogers brothers still involved in the shop, had died in early ’32. That second time, he’d told Steve quite sincerely that he needed a drink.

 

It was a testament to Steve’s exhaustion, to his numbness and to how few people he had left in his life to talk to, that he’d responded dumbly with, “But that’s illegal.”

 

His face had turned red immediately, as had Barnes’s. Barnes probably thought he’d offended Steve, and Steve—who, like the rest of his family, neighborhood, and everyone he knew, had been kept in good supply of alcohol for all of his adult life, despite its purchase and consumption having been illegal for all that time, couldn’t think why on Earth he’d just said that.

 

“Oh!” Barnes had said, as awkward as Steve had ever seen him. “I—sorry, of course. I meant...um. Tea.”     

 

Steve had considered faking his own death right then, to get out of the conversation, but had instead nodded vaguely while Barnes excused himself, probably thinking Steve was a teetotaler or an undercover cop, and Steve hadn’t seen him again for almost three months.   


But he _had_ seen him again. Barnes had eventually returned, cheerful as ever, and continued to appear so genuinely happy to see Steve; warm and friendly, and generous with his smiles and gestures - just pleased to find himself in Steve Rogers’ company.  


And that, _that_ was the thing Steve couldn’t shake, holding the waistcoat with its bullet hole- a _bullet_ hole, what was this, Agatha Christie? But Barnes _liked_ Steve; and he was the only person in the world nowadays, maybe the only person ever, in whom Steve seemed to inspire genuine confidence.  


So, then Steve decided to do something a little bit stupid.  


He carefully set the waistcoat back down on the counter and reached over the stool he’d been perched on before Barnes came in to retrieve his rumpled coat. He eased himself into it, still staring out towards the street, and walked like he was in a trance to the door.  


This was a dumb decision; an exceptionally dumb one, even. He glanced back at the waistcoat on the table, with its little round, fraying hole. He thought about how kind Barnes always was to him; the warmth in his eyes when he’d squeezed Steve’s arm and said to call him “Bucky.”  


_I bet he’d do this sort of thing for me_ , Steve thought to himself, which was almost certainly absolutely untrue and pathetic, but part of him felt and hoped it might just be true.  


So, he flipped the “Open” sign to “Closed,” flicked off the overhead lights, and slipped out onto the street after Bucky Barnes.  


Outside it was warmer and muggier than it had been that morning, and he felt himself begin to sweat almost immediately, from nerves and embarrassment as well as the humidity, but he squinted down the street and picked out the back of Barnes’s head under his fine black hat (and damn it all, Steve had left his own hat back at the shop), his coat billowing behind him. He was over a block away - nearly two - and if he turned a corner Steve would lose him, but he figured it he kept a quick pace and stayed half a block behind he could blend into the crowd of early-evening shoppers and kids scampering home from school.  


What he’d do if Barnes caught him, he had no idea. He supposed he could lie and pretend it was a coincidence, but that seemed really drastically unlikely to work - Steve had always been a rotten liar. Combine that with the fact that Barnes was charging down Utica, where Steve didn’t live or even really know his way around, and that Steve was hatless, rumpled, sweaty, and had closed his store early - and he figured he’d be hard-pressed to lie to Barnes convincingly about anything at all.   


Well, it was unlikely to come up. There wasn’t much Steve was good at, or much that weighing ninety pounds as an adult was good for, but he was fast and whisper-quiet when he wasn’t coughing. He could hide easily in plain sight.   


Barnes certainly didn’t notice Steve, but he didn’t make himself an easy man to follow. He darted around, often crossing streets for no discernible reason and several times glancing anxiously over his shoulder. (Every time, Steve dove out of the way, twice behind some startled lady shoppers and once behind a trash can.) After less than ten minutes, his brisk, hurried pace had slowed to a near-crawl and he seemed to be breathing hard. Steve was having trouble keeping up with him. He could see Barnes had pressed his hand to his side again, like he’d been doing in the shop when he didn’t know Steve could see him.   


Steve wondered if Barnes - _Bucky -_ was cupping his hand over the wound that had ruined his waistcoat, or if he was simply imagining that his hand was in just the same spot as the raggedy little bullet hole that had sent Steve on this ridiculous errand.   


Eventually, Barnes turned off Utica and a few twists later, let himself into a basement apartment in a neighborhood Steve had never been to before. Steve watched, creeping closer as night began to fall and the light from the boxy little basement window turned on.  


Acutely aware of the sweat dripping down his back and dampening his hair - and how utterly fucked he would be if Barnes caught him now - Steve crept closer, until he could see inside the little apartment from above.  


It was small, but not as small as Steve’s place, a little bit nicer and a little neater. Like Steve, Barnes’s kitchen table was a board balanced on a bathtub, but there were two rooms in this place - Steve could see a doorway and no bed, so presumably Bucky had a separate bedroom of his own. Most of the furniture was clean and uninspiring, and none of it was quite as bedraggled or woebegone as the kitchen chairs and single armchair at Steve’s place, all of which had come into his family’s possession before Steve was even born.  


Barnes stood at the kitchen table, holding his hat in both hands and apparently breathing hard, before he seemed to straighten up and walk to a hook by the door to hang his outdoor things. Steve watched, oddly entranced, as Barnes moved to the door at the back that must lead to a bedroom and disappeared behind it, leaving it slightly ajar.   


A rustling behind him made Steve jump, but it was only a couple out walking their dog. Steve awkwardly pretended to be tying his shoelaces and hoped nobody noticed him staring into the window of Barnes’s basement apartment. By the time the couple walked on down the street, Barnes had emerged from the bedroom, and he wasn’t wearing any shirt at all.

 

Steve actually gasped; across Bucky’s stomach there was a spreading deep, dark bruise - at the center of which an awful purple-black circle leaked pus and blood that clumped and stained the rag Barnes was holding against the wound. The skin around the hole was red and inflamed, and Bucky’s face was far more miserable and pinched than it had been in the shop.  


Steve was not squeamish about blood or bruises, much less squeamish about _pain_ \- he’d taken some real whacks in his day, and once had to pull a shard of tooth out of his knuckles—but the mere sight of Bucky’s belly made Steve feel almost woozy with sympathy and echoes of pain.  


Steve could hear more rustling and scuffing, and figured more people were coming his way down the street. He half-heartedly faked tying his shoes again, still gaping through the window in horror.   


As he watched, Barnes winced his way over to the kitchen sink, where he wet the rag before pressing it to his injury again. Steve winced with him; that had to sting. Barnes reached into his pants pocket with one hand and deftly withdrew a pack of cigarettes. He flicked it open and pulled out a smoke with his teeth. Doing so caused him to turn his face upwards, almost catching sight of Steve, who dove out of the way into the scrubby grass nearby.     


As he lay on the ground, stomach to the pavement, praying no one noticed him, he couldn’t get rid of the image of Barnes without his shirt, cigarette between his teeth, leaning over the kitchen sink. In better times, perhaps, without the wound - the taut lines of his body relaxed and that warm, eye-crinkling smile on his face.   


Steve imagined himself standing right behind him, behind Bucky Barnes; smiling as Barnes relaxed in his kitchen, holding his hand out for the cigarette to share, their lips pressed on the same filter like a kiss once removed. So casual, so easy, because in Steve’s imagination now, Bucky was turning and catching Steve round the waist - and maybe _Steve_ wasn’t wearing a shirt either? - pulling him closer, then cupping his face in both of his big hands. And for once Steve thought he wouldn’t hate being tiny if it meant Bucky could cradle his face that way; to kiss him once, then smile more deeply and kiss him again, properly this time, nipping his lip a little while Steve raised his hands to skim Bucky’s bare chest.   


So, distracted was Steve by this pleasant fantasy that he very nearly failed to notice the sound of the door to Barnes’s apartment swinging open, and when he twisted around to see what was going on, his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.   


The person entering Barnes’s apartment building was carrying a gun. Steve wasn’t sure why or how, but he was fully, completely sure that his eyes didn’t deceive him, that his imagination wasn’t running away with him this time. He felt a terrible certainty in his gut, and as he scrambled to his feet off the ground, he saw as the door swung closed that the man with the gun was going down the stairs, towards the basement, towards _Barnes_.   


“Hey,” Steve rasped, and before he’d quite decided to. “Hey! Wait!”  


Which was a very stupid thing to say.   


Fortunately, whoever it was didn’t appear to hear Steve, and the door closed before Steve reached it. His heart was pounding in his throat now - it appeared to be fairly leaping and twisting as he panicked - and he grabbed the door handle and, expecting it to be locked, wrenched it violently.   


The door was large and metal, but hollow and unlocked, and the strength of Steve’s pull nearly sent _him_ flying on his ass _._ Gasping, he threw the door the rest of the way and charged down the stairs.   


He didn’t have a plan, he realized halfway down.   


He also didn’t have the benefit of a weapon, or, come to that, a body much larger than that of the average thirteen-year-old. He didn’t have any connection to Barnes besides being his tailor, but still he couldn’t stop.   


He charged down the steps, finally getting the voice to shout, “ _HEY!_ ” loudly enough that the man on the landing turned around.   


Steve, taking advantage of his momentary element of surprise, leapt down the last few steps and collided bodily with the stranger, leading with his fist which connected painfully with the man’s eye socket and hearing a terrible a crunch.   


A split second later he was on his back on the ground, the stranger pinning him down and aiming a punch at his face. It landed spectacularly, and Steve’s world erupted into bright, stinging surprise, before he vaguely remembered he had hands and began clawing wildly at his assailant’s face. Flat on his back, he couldn’t get any proper leverage to punch the guy, but he could push and smack and claw, and he blindly did all three, while also drawing his knee up to the stranger’s groin and kneeing him hard in the balls.   


In the confused shuffling of cursing, hollering, and grunting that followed, Barnes must have thrown his door open, because when Steve finally managed to roll out from under the stranger’s grip, he collided with Barnes’s legs.   


“What the _hell_?” Bucky said, bending quickly and hoisting Steve up under the arms to pull him to his feet. “ _Steve?_ ”  


The other guy, the one whose gun was sent clattering down the corridor when Steve leapt on him, was getting to his feet too, and he and Steve both remembered and located the gun at precisely the same moment. Steve lunged for it, but the stranger was faster. He elbowed Steve as they dove to the floor, sending Steve careening into the wall.   


The stranger had his pistol now, but Barnes was at his side and kicked his ribs hard before he could finish standing up. The stranger grunted and staggered, but still made it to his feet.   


“What the fuck are you doing here, Murphy?” Barnes growled, apparently unconcerned with the gun, as Steve watched from just behind him, sagging against the wall. “You here to scare me?”  


While to Steve, the idea of someone showing up at his house past dark with a gun was pretty scary, Barnes appeared to be hovering somewhere between bemused and dismissive; whoever Murphy was, and whatever he might have intended to do with that pistol, it clearly didn’t even come close to concerning or intimidating Bucky.    


“Who the fuck is this little bastard?” Murphy snarled back with bloody where Steve had punched his mouth, gesturing to Steve. “Your boyfriend?”  


“I’d watch your mouth!” Steve snapped, ignoring for the moment that he’d been just imagining kissing Barnes, and that his voice, even at its most angry and powerful, had the squeaky, beleaguered quality of a rubber duck impersonating a drill sergeant.   


“Why the hell should I?” Murphy shot back, to which Barnes instantly replied, “You mean besides how easily we just kicked your ass?”  


Murphy made a face like he smelled something nasty, and Steve, feeling reckless and untethered, his head ringing and his mouth and nose stinging terribly, hollered, “Besides which, whatever you think you’re doing here, you’re making a big mistake. My uncle is Mad Dog Coll, you prick.”  


Bucky and Murphy both stared at him, and Steve hoped Mad Dog Coll wasn’t dead or disgraced or in prison somewhere. Apparently, he wasn’t, because Bucky swiveled his head back around to Murphy with an air of bored triumph.    


“Get out of here, you idiot,” he said, and Murphy threw them both a dirty look, muttered something along the lines of “your funeral,” and scrambled back up the stairs.   


Barnes, still in socks and without a shirt, rounded instantly on Steve as soon as Murphy was out of sight.  


“What the _hell_ are you doing here?”  


Steve looked at him, feeling blood drip from his nose onto his shirt.   


Oh, right. He’d followed Barnes here. To his house. They weren’t friends - Christ, certainly not _lovers_ , like Steve had been imagining - Steve was Barnes’s _tailor_. He made the guy’s suit jackets for god’s sake.   


“Um,” he said eloquently.   


“Christ, are you ever lucky I showed up,” Barnes said.   
           

“I had him on the ropes,” Steve replied, sheepishly.   
           

Barnes’s eyebrows jumped up. He seemed to be asking if Steve was even serious. Steve wiped his bloody nose.   
           

“Come inside,” Barnes grunted at last.   
           

He turned and Steve followed him, acutely aware that he had absolutely no decent or even sane explanation for his presence in the neighborhood.   
           

“You ain’t never met Mad Dog Coll in your life, have you?” Barnes asked, turning on the sink and running water over a rag.   
           

“No,” Steve admitted.   
           

“Lucky for you, neither has Murphy. That poor son of a bitch died in February.”  
           

He tossed Steve the rag and Steve nearly dropped it. Then, realizing it was drenched in ice cold water, pressed it hard to his stinging nose. The cool relief was worth the momentary sense of suffocation.   
           

“Thanks,” he mumbled to Bucky.   
           

“Anytime. Actually, wait, no. Not _anytime_. You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”   
           

Steve considered burying his face fully in the washcloth, but thought that might be a bit obvious. With a sigh, he lowered the rag and looked at Bucky.   
           

“You said I’d figure it out, and I did. With your vest. The bullet hole.”  
           

Bucky blinked. He opened and closed his mouth several times, then said, “I didn’t think you’d actually—y’know, figure it out.”  
           

Steve said, before he could think better of it, “I’m not actually stupid.” He immediately regretted it - thinking he sounded squawking and whiny - but it was true. Barnes told him to figure it out. Following Barnes to his apartment may not have been the obvious or logical step, but the source of the hole in the waistcoat was hardly difficult to decipher.   
           

“So, you _followed_ me here?”  
           

Steve felt his flush deepen in spite of his throbbing nose. “I figured you were hurt, okay? I was...worried.”  
           

Barnes stared. Steve tried to think of a way to explain himself without sounding insane or obsessive or both. He tried to think of a way to explain that Bucky Barnes was one of the only people in the world who seemed like he cared that Steve was still around, and that he couldn’t ignore it when things were going wrong; that he couldn’t just _let_ something bad happen, not when he was right there to help.  
           

“I see a situation pointed south, I can’t ignore it,” he muttered lamely. “Sometimes I wish I could.”  
           

Barnes looked at him another long moment, then snorted. “That’s...awfully noble.” He took a few short steps to the window Steve had been using to spy on him and drew the blind closed.  
           

Steve felt himself flushing down to his navel. Barnes chuckled again, then winced and cupped the wound in his side.   
           

“Is that guy gonna come back? Is he the one who—who did that?”  
           

Barnes said, “No. The one who did _that_ ” - he raised his eyebrows and gestured broadly to his own body - “is already back in Chicago, the prick. Murphy’s just trying to shake me down, the fuckin’ vulture. Idiot. Although,” he added, looking Steve up and down, “not as big an idiot as _you_. Lemme see your nose.”  
           

“It’s fine,” Steve said, lowering the rag from his face, but Bucky caught his chin—Steve’s heart, still pounding from the adrenaline, did a little flip—and mumbled something about taking a look.   
           

Under the light of the single bare bulb in Bucky’s apartment, his face craning backwards, Steve felt oddly exposed, and even more, oddly _thrilled_ by it. He didn’t like to feel trapped, or vulnerable, to show his neck or let anybody loom over him, but this felt...okay. Maybe more than okay. Bucky’s hand was so warm on his chin, and then he was spreading his hand out, cupping Steve’s cheek, his fingertips ghosting along the shell of Steve’s ear, his thumb padding gently under Steve’s eye.   
           

“You’ll be okay,” he mumbled. “You really did - all this, just on a hunch? For me?”   
           

Steve swallowed hard, then felt himself nod. Bucky, warm under the yellow glow from the lightbulb, his hand still so gentle but so steady on Steve’s face, smiled, a lock of hair falling from his forehead to fall right between his eyes. Steve’s heart seemed to swoop with sudden affection.    
           

“You do that for every guy that comes into your shop?” Bucky murmured.   
           

“Definitely not,” Steve replied, quietly, and leaned in to close the distance between their faces, feeling foolish and determined and as oddly certain as he had about Murphy’s gun that this was _right._  
           

Bucky met him halfway there, kissing him once very gently, then far more deeply and insistently as Steve brought a hand up to hold his bare shoulder. Bucky’s other hand cupped Steve’s face, so he was cradling Steve’s whole head, and Steve gently twined his arms around Bucky’s neck, mindful of his injury but wanting to be closer to him, to eradicate any remaining distance between them.   
           

After a moment, Steve began to feel a little dizzy, so he gently pulled away. Bucky didn’t let go of his face, still holding it eagerly between his huge palms. Steve curled his fingers around the base of Bucky’s skull in return, carding through his soft hair.   
           

“Please tell me you don’t do _that_ for every guy who comes into your shop,” Bucky said, grinning massively, his voice even but his face as giddy as Steve felt.   
           

“Not usually, no,” he said, smiling as well. Bucky’s grin was infectious.   
           

Bucky finally let go of his face, only to gather Steve entirely into his arms. He dropped a tiny kiss onto Steve’s jaw, then several more until he was kissing Steve again, properly, and Steve wanted to stay right there forever. He had never felt as warm and complete as he did in that moment.   
           

Bucky broke away this time, and Steve’s mouth felt swollen and tender from kissing. “I’m thinking,” Bucky said, “it could get awfully dangerous out there, and you seem awfully prone to excitement. Do you want to stay the night?”  
           

By way of an answer, Steve kissed him soundly on the mouth.

  


 

  
  
  
  


 

 


	2. Illustrations!

Check out the gorgeous illustrations that led to this story's creations!!

 

**Author's Note:**

> Mad Dog Coll was a real guy! And he really did die in February of 1932. He is the only historical domain character to show up in this work. ;) 
> 
> I have a deeply neglected


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